Hands on: Lenovo ThinkPad Twist

Today Lenovo unveiled the ThinkPad Twist in India. The ThinkPad Twist builds upon the ideas, the company heralded in the IdeaPad Yoga convertible, but this time around in an enterprise ready package under the iconic ThinkPad branding. We went hands on with it, read on to find out more.

Like all ThinkPads the Twist is built to last. Lenovo has managed to conjure a design that brings the wacky Windows 8 hybrid mentality with the reliability of a tough as nails business notebook, all in a package that weighs just 1.58kg. It has a 12.5-inch Full HD touchscreen panel that boasts 350 nits of brightness something we found to be extremely nice in our short time with the product.

Its similarities with the IdeaPad Yoga are quite obvious as it can be swivelled around with gay abandon in a tablet like form-factor or the ‘Tent’ position the Yoga made so famous. Other than that there is a minute difference in the hinge design, as the ThinkPad Twist cannot retract at a full 180-degree angle.

Lenovo has really nailed the keyboard design and the ThinkPad Twist features its customary ‘U’ shaped keys in an island style format. Lenovo by far makes some of the best keyboards in the market and that remains true of the ThinkPad Twist. It also has a glass touchpad that has a twin separate keys and a scroller, along with a standard ThinkPad style tracker dot. The touchpad supports Windows 8 gestures, but we did not test the fluidity of the gestures in great depth.

There are a number of neat design embellishments that are unique to the ThinkPad Twist. For instance on the branding on the palm rest, Lenovo has embedded indicator lights. The palm rest itself has a rubberized finish, which contrasts the chrome strips on the sides.

Internally, it has 500GB of storage, which is coupled with a SSD cache drive. This ensures fast boot times and of course the base model starts with an Intel Ivy Bridge processor, which means performance will always be like a McLaren F1 car. That said, one could also opt for a higher configuration if one is willing to shell out more cash.

Other than this it has a number of Lenovo enterprise grade software features that will attract its business users.

At the end of the day, the Lenovo ThinkPad Twist feels like a very niche product at a base price of Rs 71,000, but it definitely offers a compelling feature set. We will have more on the product once we have a review unit in our hands.